Windows Vista Business Edition security can trip you up when trying to run Altio for the first time.

The simplest thing I have found is to:

1. Install Altio.
2. Before staring Altio Presentation Server change the security settings.
   
   1. Open Windows explorer.
   2. Go to the directory where Altio is installed e.g. Program Files.
   3. Select the Altio folder e.g. AltioStudioEnterprise5.2.
   4. Right click on the folder and select properties.
   5. Select the security tabclick on “Edit” button for “To change permissions, click…..”
   6. Select the “Users….” group.
   7. Select “Full Control” from the “Permissions for Users” list.
   8. Click OK.
3. Now start Altio - everything should run as expected.

The reason you need to change security settings is that Windows provides restricted user access to the “Program Files” directory, so when Tomcat tries to unpack the WAR file it can’t.

Thanks to everyone who attended our JavaOne technical session last week - it was great to see lots of people interested in applets. I’ll try and get the examples + source code posted here very soon so that you can see how the samples were implemented.

Wow what a week.

It seems like a long build up to the release of JavaFX and the new browser plugin and I can’t wait for it to happen. As Jim mentions in his summary of day 3 I think there will now be a concern amongst AJAX followers that the technology is going to look dated. At the moment AJAX front ends that want to be really rich seem to rely too much upon Flash, look at Google Analytics - all the charts are Flash.

Even today AltioLive’s Graph control that will be released in Altio 5.2 shows the power of Applet based technologies over JavaScript. There are several JavaScript based graph widgets but they tend to be slow when handling lots of data.

I strongly believe that Java 6 has again made Java Applets an option for consumer Rich Web Applications and can come out from hiding in the enterprise solution area, and JavaFX further strengthens the position of Java Applets as a solution.

I’m sure that if you talk to the Java SE team they will strongly disagree with the idea of JavaFX being “stillborn”. Healthy competition between SilverLight, Flash, Applets and AJAX is required to provide end users with the best user experience possible.

If you want to see a real FilthyRich Web Application look at the AltioLive IDE, as Jim put’s it we “Eat our own dog food” I don’t believe a product can trully say it is good unless you can create an IDE using the underlying framework. I like Eclipse but there must be something wrong if AJAX and Flash don’t have IDE’s using their own technology. NOTE: there are some AJAX IDE’s out there.

This is the video of the Sun presentation demonstrating how the new Java 6 Update 10 plugin enables applets to be dragged out of the browser to exist as desktop ‘widgets’.

http://news.zdnet.com/2422-13568_22-200560.html

Today was the final JavaOne pavilion day, and it was just as busy as the other days.

We had a visit from a customer, Tom did an impromptu Altio application for an attendee who turned up with his own data file and wanted to see it visualized using the Altio Graph control, we raffled off an Asus Eee to a lucky winner and we got rid of all the remaining Altio stress/juggling balls.

The JavaFX buzz is still the main focus of the show, and we had a few people asking if we were going to support JavaFX and/or the ability to drag applets out of the webpage. We also had an AJAX-based competitor rather unconvincingly declare JavaFX to be ’stillborn’, which seemed like an absurd way to describe a technology that obviously has the full backing of Sun and is intended to revolutionize how to create Java applications for the desktop, web or mobile. Couldn’t be because AJAX applications are going to start to look under-powered and old-hat very soon could it?

The After Dark party later was outside, which was a bit chilly, but had Smash Mouth as the entertainment, which was pretty cool. I was a bit too shattered to really enjoy it though - it’s been a long, but worthwhile week. Shame I didn’t get to see any technical sessions - we underestimated the amount of effort to keep the booth ticking over - but hopefully we’ll be back next year, and in greater numbers.